I Received System to Become Dragonborn-Chapter 1201: Push Harder

The last echoes of chanting collapsed into silence, smothered beneath smoke, frost, and earth. Flames crackled through the ruins, eating at broken walls and collapsed towers, while sheets of ice slowly crept across the sand where Aesa’s power had passed.

The air still vibrated with residual curse energy. It was like a sickness that refused to die cleanly.

Erend lowered his arms first. Lightning faded from his body, leaving faint afterimages crawling along his scales before they dimmed.

He sighed, steadying himself, and scanned the ruins for movement but none came. No chanting or shifting sand. Just destruction and stillness.

Aesa stood rigid a few steps away. Frost still clung to her fingers, refusing to melt. Her breathing stayed controlled but her jaw tightened as waves of lingering essence tried to sink into her again.

The memories stirred at the edge of her mind sharply. She forced them down one breath at a time. Her nails dug into her palm until the pain grounded her in the present.

Eccar’s scales receded from his face and he wiped a hand across it, leaving streaks of dust and blood. The earth beneath his feet settled unevenly, responding sluggishly instead of instantly as it once had.

He noticed it and frowned. His power still answered, but with resistance as if the ground hesitated to obey.

Erend walked toward them. His steps crunching over frozen sand and rubble.

"How’s your condition?" he said quietly.

"I’m still here," Aesa replied while holding her head. "That’s all I can promise right now."

Eccar nodded once. "Same."

Erend accepted that without comment. He knew pushing would only fracture what little balance they had regained.

"Rest for a bit before we continue," Erend said.

He turned instead and chose to survey the ruins again. Maybe they could find something in this different thing that the Dungeon World created.

The structures were wrong. Too detailed and deliberate. Erend somehow certain that these weren’t illusions stitched together by chance.

Streets still existed beneath the sand. Walls showing bore markings worn by time.

Aesa’s eyes narrowed. "You said Dungeon Worlds usually don’t create things like this."

"No," Eccar agreed.

A faint tremor passed through the ground, subtle but unmistakable. It was not an attack but more like a pulse.

Erend felt it in his chest before he felt it in his feet.

The black door appeared again at the far end of the ruins, rising from the sand between two collapsed towers. Its surface rippled, not like before.

Aesa followed Erend’s gaze.

"If this level already does this..." she said quietly, "...what happens next?"

Eccar didn’t answer. He stared at the door, then at the ruins behind them.

Erend stepped forward anyway. Pain from the curses earlier still lingered in his body, and anxiety pressed against his thoughts, but his resolve didn’t waver.

He reached the door and paused, glancing back at them one last time.

"We can’t stop," he said.

Aesa straightened. Frost receded fully from her hands. "Then open it."

Eccar planted his feet beside her. "Right. Lets go!"

Erend placed his hand on the door.

The darkness swallowed them whole as Level 56 closed behind their backs.

—

Back in Level 16.

Magic moved across the battlefield without pause, filling the ruined expanse with clashing elements and screaming force.

The undead Elves surged in uneven waves, their bodies cracked and hollowed, yet their spellcasting remained disturbingly intact.

Spells ignited in their dead hands, chants spilled from broken throats, and bolts of Magical power streaked through the air in so many colors that it was hard to track.

King Gulben stood at the front as always. His sword drove into the ground as a wide barrier of golden sigils flared into existence. Fire slammed against it, followed by corrosive mist and blades of compressed wind.

The barrier held, but each impact forced him to brace harder. His boots carve shallow lines into the ground.

"They still cast like court Mages," Adrius shouted as he deflected a spiraling lance of frost with a burst of light. "Without degradation or loss of control!"

"That’s what makes this worse," Lysander, his apprentice, replied grimly. His staff humming as he sends an attack to cut through a necrotic construct only for another spell to strike from behind. "Elves already excel at Magic. Undead Elves make it more troublesome.!"

Aurdis moved like a streak of silver and green, arrows wrapped in condensed Magic energy piercing through spellcasters before their incantations finished.

Even so, her breathing had grown sharp. Her focus stretched thin as overlapping attacks scraped against her defenses.

"They’re overwhelming us with a variety of attacks. Flame, binding, decay, illusion, all layered," she said, shooting another Magical arrows she created.

Aerchon raised his sword, intercepting a shockwave that rattled his bones.

"Living Elves like us fight with restraint," he said. "But they don’t do that."

Saeldir’s hands burned with complex spell circles as he countered a twisting curse midair, unraveling it before it could root itself into the ground. Sweat beaded along his brow despite the cold fear creeping through the battlefield.

"We trained our whole lives to fight Magic. But fighting Magic without fear or fatigue is something else entirely," he muttered, more to himself.

Adrien ducked as a blackened spear of Magical energy tore past him and shattered against a distant hill. He rolled to his feet and fired his own attack, blasting undead Elves apart in a burst of light.

That sentiment echoed silently among them.

There was no grief slowing the Elves’ hands now. No hesitation in their attacks. Any sorrow they might have felt had been drowned beneath the crushing pressure of survival.

Fighting their own kind no longer felt tragic. It felt infuriating.

King Gulben shattered another incoming spell and straightened. He then said with a steady voice despite the chaos.

"We endure and use this opportunity to strengthen ourselves. That is what our people have always done. Remember, they are not Elves, but undead!"

Aurdis set her jaw, intended to push back harder.

Another wave came, power rising once more, and the fighters met it with the same ferocity.

Magic collided with Magic as the already ruined battlefield burned and broke beneath their feet.

—